Attacker dead after shooting 4 firefighters, 2 fatally in NY state

Guelph Mercury

WEBSTER, N.Y. - A man ambushed four volunteer firefighters responding to an intense pre-dawn house fire Monday morning in a town in western New York State, killing two before ending up dead himself, authorities said. Police used an armoured vehicle to evacuate more than 30 nearby residents.

The attacker fired at the firefighters when they arrived shortly after 5:30 a.m. at the blaze near the Lake Ontario shore in the town of Webster, Police Chief Gerald Pickering said. The first police officer who arrived chased the suspect and exchanged gunfire with him, authorities said.

“It does appear it was a trap” for the first responders to the fire, Pickering said at a news conference.

Authorities didn’t say how the assailant died or whether anyone might have died in the fire itself.

One of the dead firefighters was also a town police lieutenant; it wasn’t clear whether he returned fire. An off-duty police officer who was driving by was injured by shrapnel, Pickering said.

The fire started in one home and spread to two others and a car, officials said. The gunfire initially kept firefighters from battling the blazes. Police say four homes were destroyed and four damaged.

The fire department learned of the blaze early Monday after a report of a car and house on fire on a narrow peninsula where Irondequoit Bay meets Lake Ontario, Monroe County Sheriff Patrick O’Flynn said.

The fire appeared from a distance as a pulsating ball of flame glowing against the early morning sky, flames licking into treetops and reflecting on the water, with huge bursts of smoke billowing away in a brisk wind.

Two of the firefighters arrived on a fire engine and two in their own vehicles, Pickering said. After the attacker fired, one of the wounded men managed to flee, but the other three couldn’t because of flying gunfire.

A police armoured vehicle was used to recover two of the men, and eventually it evacuated 33 people from nearby homes, the police chief said.

The two wounded firefighters were in guarded condition in the intensive care unit, authorities said. Both were awake and alert and are expected to recover.

One of the firefighters was hit once in the pelvis, and the bullet lodged in his spine, authorities said. The other was hit in the chest and knee.

Monday’s shooting and fires were in a neighbourhood of seasonal and year-round homes set close together across the road from the lakeshore. The area is popular with recreational boaters but is normally quiet this time of year.

O’Flynn lamented the violence, which comes on the heels of other shootings including the massacre of 20 students and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

“It’s sad to see that that this is becoming more commonplace in communities across the nation,” O’Flynn said.